Samsung launches the Galaxy S22 Ultra with S Pen

Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S22 Ultra smartphone today, which will be the company’s first flagship for 2022 and the successor to both the Galaxy S21 Ultra from 2021 and the Galaxy Note20 Ultra from 2020. The inclusion of the S Pen from the now-defunct Galaxy Note range, in addition to the typical year-on-year enhancements, is the primary storey here.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra has a flattened front, back, top, and bottom with curved edges, similar to the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra. One of the colours (Burgundy) is especially similar to the Note 20’s Mystic Bronze. The S22 Ultra, like that phone, has a more gently curved display. The new camera array is arranged on the rear in a manner identical to that of last year’s S21 Ultra, but without the big elevated island that surrounded it.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra is built with an aluminium frame and Corning Gorilla Glass Victus+ on the front and rear. Both the phone and the S Pen are water and dust resistant to IP68 standards.

The new integrated S Pen has a 2.8ms latency and AI-based co-ordinate prediction technology. In addition, Samsung has upgraded the handwriting to text capability, which now supports 88 languages.

The new Quick Note feature enables you to attach or link material in a Pop Up note within Samsung apps such as the Browser and Gallery. There’s also a new Collaboration View function that allows you to sync your Galaxy S22 Ultra with the Tab S8 Series. This allows you to use the S22 Ultra to switch between tools while drawing on the Tab S8.

The S22 Ultra’s display is similar to that of its predecessor. It has a 6.8-inch 1440p Dynamic AMOLED 2X panel with a dynamic refresh rate of 120Hz. Samsung promises a touch sampling rate of 240Hz, a peak brightness of 1,750 nits, and 100 percent DCI-P3 coverage. An ultrasonic fingerprint sensor is also included in the panel.

The 108MP F/1.8 main camera on the Galaxy S22 Ultra is the same as on the Galaxy S21 Ultra. It is flanked by a 12MP f/2.2 ultrawide camera and two telephoto lenses – a 10MP F/2.4 3x and a 10MP F/4.9 10x periscope.

A 40MP F/2.2 selfie camera is located on the front of the device. Instead of new hardware, the business has introduced new AI enhancements that use the upgraded NPU to boost photo and video quality in low light and offer new camera functionality.

Auto Framing is one of the new features. The phone can crop in and adapt the photo for the number of people in the frame by using the ultrawide camera on the rear. It can track up to ten individuals at once and will automatically zoom out as more people enter the room. You can even manually zoom in or track one of the group members, and the photo will be framed properly.

In addition, Samsung has improved the portrait mode effect, which can now provide cleaner results and better background separation, even on animals. To fix lighting in edit, new studio lighting effects have been introduced. A night portrait mode, which activates automatically when photographing in low light, has been added.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra will be powered by either Samsung’s latest Exynos 2200 SoC or Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor. Both of these flagship chipsets are built on the latest 4nm manufacturing process and include octa-core CPU designs that are comparable. The Qualcomm chipset, on the other hand, has the company’s Adreno 730 GPU, whereas the Exynos chipset will include the new AMD RDNA2-based Xclipse 920 GPU. Both have better AI processing, with Samsung claiming a twofold increase in NPU speed over the S21 series.

In terms of memory and storage, the S22 Ultra will begin with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. Other configurations will include up to 12GB of RAM and storage options of 256GB, 512GB, or 1TB.

The S22 Ultra will come pre-installed with One UI 4.1 on top of Android 12. It includes a 5000mAh battery and can charge at up to 45W with a cable charger and 15W wirelessly.

The Galaxy S22 Ultra will be available in Phantom Black, Phantom White, Green, and Burgundy on February 25th, with pre-orders beginning today. Samsung.com will be the only place to get additional Graphite, Red, and Sky Blue colour options. Prices for the 8/128GB variant begin at $1199/€1249.